SherpaVentures raises $154 million to fund on-demand services

Scott Stanford, left, and Shervin Pishevar have closed a $154 million debut fund at SherpaVentures.

SherpaVentures, a San Francisco investment fund focused on the emerging category of on-demand consumer services, said Thursday that it has closed its first fund with a war chest of $154 million.

Managing partners Shervin Pishevar and Scott Stanford started the fund last year after they separately led early investments in app-enabled ride service Uber on behalf of Menlo Ventures and Goldman Sachs, respectively.

The two found that they shared a vision of the “On Demand Economy,” or ODE, Stanford said.

“Consumer expectations have shifted,” he said. “They want it now. They have the ability to get it now. Uber demonstrated how breakthrough an experience can be when you leverage the ubiquity of mobile devices and connectivity. We’re seeing that play out in categories that are ripe for re-invention where the incumbents aren’t necessarily providing all the services that now are possible.”

For example, Munchery, which offers deliveries of chef-prepared meals, is one of SherpaVentures’ largest investments.

Another example is San Francisco’s Shyp, which on Wednesday announced a $10 million Series A (early stage) investment led by SherpaVentures, which also provided seed funding.

“Shyp is transforming the ‘first mile’ of shopping,” Stanford said. “You can take a picture of something — anything — enter an address where you want it to go and in 10 or 15 minutes, someone shows up and takes it. They handle everything to get it delivered.” The cost is $5 on top of standard shipping fees.

Kevin Gibbon, Shyp CEO and co-founder, said the managing partners’ advice and networks have proven invaluable.

For instance, Shyp will expand to New York this fall. “They connected us with people who’ve already done it, such as the heads of operations at Munchery and Uber, to talk through the different processes,” he said.

SherpaVentures takes mentoring so seriously that it launched a complimentary company called SherpaFoundry, led by Tina Sharkey, the former head of BabyCenter.com, to advise its portfolio companies and others. The “sherpa” moniker is meant to conjure up an image of services, Stanford said.

Stanford describes himself facetiously as an immigrant from Indiana, while Pishevar immigrated from Iran in his youth, after which his father worked as a taxi driver.

“I grew up in a taxi. The murder rate was high, and my dad got beat up sometimes,” Pishevar said at the Share conference in May. “So there is a lot of irony in disrupting the taxi market” through Uber.

He waxed hyperbolic about the so-called “sharing economy” at the conference.

“This is one of the most important shifts in human behavior ever,” he said. “There’s a revolution going on in how we as consumers view the world… The shift in human behavior is happening at a speed that I have never seen before.”